Prospect Weekly: French Connection

The news of the week is of course the prospects in the return in the Matt Duchene trade. We’ll dig into their games as we get to know them and when it is sorted out where they will be playing as a member of the Avalanche organization. But for now we welcome Shane Bowers, a forward at Boston University, Vladislav Kamenev, who is another forward currently assigned to the AHL in San Antonio and defenseman Samuel Girard, who will get at least an initial look with the Avalanche.

Nicolas Meloche shook off the rust from a few days off from apparent illness and scored not one but two of his first points as a professional. The first came on a nice hold in the zone and shot after a power play had expired on Felix Girard‘s goal. Meloche would go on to add three shots, which tied the team lead for the evening, earn a +2 rating and was named first star in San Antonio’s 4-2 win over the Iowa Wild.

Julien Nantel also found the back of the net for the his first points on the season. Meloche got a secondary assist on this play where Nantel pounced on a loose puck and hammered it home. It was nice to see contributions from some of the younger Avalanche prospects when afforded a greater opportunity in this game.

Over in Colorado Eagles territory, the JC Beaudin to Michael Joly connection is alive and well. The two have connected on four of of Joly’s current six goal per game streak and they would be a nice pair to bring up to San Antonio when they could see time in the lineup together. On this particular play Beaudin wins the faceoff and delivers a nice chip pass to Joly who snipes home the winner in overtime in the 4-3 victory over the Idaho Steelheads. Joly leads the Eagles with 13 points and Beaudin is tied for second with 11 points.

The Canada Russia Series continues with the OHL (Timmins) kicking off their portion of the slate on Thursday, November 9th at 5pm MT on Sportnet and TVA. Tape delayed version of the broadcast will be shown on the NHL Network the following day at 8am MT. Same story for the Monday, November 13th game as well.

A big match in the NCAA from the Avs prospects perspective puts Notre Dame (Morrison) and Penn State together in a Big 10 conference match. Unfortunately it sounds like Denis Smirnov will be out a couple weeks and will not participate in the contest however. The game can be seen on NBCSN on Saturday, November 11th at 3:30pm MT.